A history blog about rioting and policing

Writing

You can find my writing in academic and popular publications, in print and online. I’ll list only the pieces that are available for free online.

Forthcoming publications include a short history of the Philadelphia Police Department for the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, and a chapter-length article on Detroit policing in the 1960s for the Detroit Historical Society’s volume of historical essays and oral histories to commemorate the 50th-anniversary of the 1967 rebellion.

I wrote a commissioned review of five books on urban rioting in the twentieth-century United States for the Journal of Urban History, which appears in their March 2016 issue (paywalled).

Jacobin published my essay on the rise of the post-WWII police dragnet in connection to the sixties rebellions–and the recent unrest in Ferguson and Baltimore over punitive policing.

Last July (2014), I wrote an essay for the Urban History Association blog on the fiftieth anniversary of the Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant uprising. The piece explores more broadly the 1960s riots and their meaning for today.

I wrote about 1960s-era police militarization for the History News Network site, published in September 2014.

I wrote a very short entry for The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia on the Columbia Avenue Riot that took place in North Philadelphia in August 1964.

The German Historical Institute published my article on rioting and policing in Philadelphia from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century in their journal, Bulletin of the GHI. Links to the article PDF; and the issue (Spring 2014).